I love punching the horns off of goats...

[RichardButte]

Think of how surreal the thread title sounds, but it's actually a LOT of fun.

Seeing as how one of the key ingredients in making arrows is horn glue, I decided to go out and harvest some aldgoat horns of my own. With the help of my LS mates, I learned that I would need one of three special attacks to break the horns off of the Aldgoat Billies in order to get them to drop (concussive blow II).

I can't stress enough how fun this was. Attacking a mob with a goal OTHER than simply whittling its health down to 0 made the encounter much more challenging, fun and rewarding, especially when I got 2 horns to drop at a time. The focus changed from just doing damage to doing as little damage as possible in order to get my TP up and them maximizing the damage and chance to hit of concussive blow II.

We need more situations like this, situations where you're trying to kill a mob under certain conditions (and it would probably help if there were some in-game way for players to learn about this).

Let's take it a step further and have more interaction between player and mob, such as...

-Mobs that need to be killed with a specific element to yield a specific drop (might already be in the game).

-Mobs that can be made friendly to the player through a certain action. Pressing the U key (by default) will allow you to use items on something. Why not feeding something to a mob that will make it follow you for 5 minutes and fight other mobs with you?

-Mobs that can be frightened away through a certain action.

-Mobs that we can communicate with. We have quite a few human mobs out there. Maybe we could tell them to leave us alone (maybe with an autotranslate sentence to standardize it) or threaten them. Maybe you say something like "I'm on your side." and the mob suddenly stops being a mob and becomes an NPC you can talk to.

-Mobs that can be "hired". What would happen if I walked up to a human mob and offered him 5,000 gil? How awesome would it be if he followed me around and helped me until his "contract" expired, after which he'd either start attacking me again or return to his normal location?

Yes, all of this may be a bit much, but I can't stress enough that more interaction between players and mobs is always a good thing. Most MMOs are just "hit it until it dies or you die". I'm glad to see FFXIV is already heading in the direction of new territory with using specific attacks on mobs to yield different results in drops.

[Otemori]

I had no idea that some drops required specific attacks. I think that's a fantastic element. Ingredient collection requiring player knowledge and personal goals not only increases a sense of interactivity, but also a sense of challenge.

[Nephera]

Finally a game where i can punch a goat in the mouth.


They should take a cue from monster hunter and have parts of the monster "break" to signify you've done enough damage to a part to get a drop/chance of a drop.

edit: oh apparently they do do this i just havent fought anything that has

sadface.

[Eiyaya]

what next? you butcher the dodo and slice it off all of its parts for food?
A conjurer's Fire II will result a very well done dodo.

[RichardButte]

what next? you butcher the dodo and slice it off all of its parts for food?
A conjurer's Fire II will result a very well done dodo.

Mobs that drop millioncorn would drop popcorn if you use fire on them.

[Hotohori]

No one mentioned the funniest incapacitation. Flipping a giant toad...

[darkstarpoet1]

No one mentioned the funniest incapacitation. Flipping a giant toad...

haha you're right i forgot about the ground based attacks flip the toad over. poor thing goes over and sprawls all over tryin to get back over.

[Malakhim]

No one mentioned the funniest incapacitation. Flipping a giant toad...

This was probably one of the highlights of some of my parties.

I'm not even sure how we actually did it, but it was funny to watch a giant toad look as helpless as a tipped turtle.

[Dromox]

It's one of the positive elements in the game, I personally really enjoy snapping the antlers off antelope stags, or knocking a goblins bomb out of his hand.

[Reika]

Yes, to get aldgoat horn drops from billies, you need to use Concussion Blow II, and i believe Skull Sunder II will also work. But only from the front.